The Motormaniacs

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Title:     The Motormaniacs
Author: Lloyd Osbourne [More Titles by Osbourne]

"It's jolly to get you off by yourself," I said as we wandered away from the rest of the party.

"Then you are not afraid of an engaged girl," she observed "Everybody else seems to be."

"I am made of sterner stuff," I said. "Besides, I am dying to know all about it."

"All about what?"

"What you found to like in Gerard Malcolm, and what Gerard Malcolm found to like in you, and what he said and what you said and what the Englishman said, and how it all happened generally."

"What you want to know would fill a book."

"You speak as if you mean it to be a sealed one."

"I don't see exactly what claim you have to be a reader."

"Well, I was the first person to love you," I said. "Surely that ought to count for something. It didn't last long, I know, but it was a wild business while it did. When I discovered you were just out for scalps--"

"And when I discovered you were the most conceited, monopolizing, jealous, troublesome and exacting man that ever lived, and that I was expected to play kitten while you did demon child--"

"Oh, of course, it was a mistake," I said quickly. "The illusion couldn't be kept up on either side. We only, really got chummy after we called it off."

"The trouble was that we were both scalpers, and when we decided to let each other alone--in that way, I mean--we built up a pleasant professional acquaintance on the ashes of the dead fires."

"Can't you make it a little warmer than acquaintance?" I protested.

"It was a real fellow feeling--whatever you choose to call it," she conceded. "You wanted to talk about yourself, and I wanted to talk about myself, and without any self-flattery I think I can say we found each other very responsive."

"I've rather a memory that you got the best of the bargain."

"There were hours and hours when I couldn't get a word in edgewise."

"And there were whole days and days--" I began.

"Now, don't let's work up a fuss," she said sweetly. "We won't have so many more talks together, and anyway it isn't professional etiquette for us to fight."

"Who wants to fight?" I said. "I never was that kind of Indian."

"Then let's begin where we left off."

"It used to be all Harry Clayton then," I remarked.

"Was it as long ago as that?" she asked. "Oh, dear, how time passes!"

"He joined the great majority, I heard."

"Oh, yes, he's married," she said. "He wasn't any good at all. What can you do with a person who has scalps to burn?"

"That kind of thing discourages an Indian," I remarked.

"It robs the thing of all its zip, but I suppose there's a Harry Clayton kind of girl, Loo."

"The woods are full of them."

"I am almost glad I've decided to bury the tomahawk."

"And leave me the last of the noble race?"

"You'll have to whoop alone."

"I'll often think of you in your log cabin with the white man," I said. "On winter nights I'll flatten my nose against the window-pane and have a little peek in; next day you'll recognize my footsteps in the snow."

"I'd be sure to know them by their size."

"I'm going to take ten dollars off your wedding present for that"

"It was one of our rules we could say anything we liked."

"It was a life of savage freedom. It takes one a little time to get into it again."

"You used to say things, too."

"I can't remember saying anything as horrid as that."

"Well, you couldn't, you know," she said, and put out the tip of a little slipper.

"I thought all the while it was to be Captain Cartwright--that Englishman with the eyeglass."

"I thought so, too."

"I read of the engagement in the papers, and I can not recollect that it was ever contradicted or anything."

"Oh, it wasn't," she said. "Ax least, not till later--lots later."

"I suppose I ought to hurriedly talk about something else," I remarked.

"You needn't feel like that at all," she returned. "The captain and I are very good friends--only be doesn't play in my yard any more."

"I can't remember Gerard Malcolm very well," I went on. "Wasn't he rather tall and thin, with a big nose and a hidden-away sister who was supposed to be an invalid?"

"That's one way of describing him."

"I'd rather like to hear yours."

"Oh, I'm quite silly about him."

"That must have happened later," I said. "It certainly didn't show at the time."

"Everything must have a beginning, you know."

"That's what I want to get at,--what made you get a transfer from the captain?"

"It all happened through an automobile," she said.

"Oh, an automobile!" I exclaimed.

"It was an awfully up-to-date affair altogether!"

"I suppose it ran away and he caught it by the bridle at the risk of his life?"

"No, he didn't stop it," she said. "He made it go."

"It isn't everybody can do that with an automobile."

"You ought to have seen the poor captain turn the crank!" she exclaimed, with a little laugh of recollection.

"So the captain was there, too?" I said. "He never struck me as the kind of man that could make anything go, exactly."

"Oh, he didn't," she said.

"I am surprised that he even tried."

"But Gerard is a perfectly beautiful mechanic. You ought to see how respectful they are to him at the garage--especially, when there's a French car in trouble."

"They are respectful to me, too."

"That's only because you're rich," she returned.

"I own a French car and drive it myself," I said, "and--but I see there's no use of my saying anything."

"It's genius with Gerard," she said. "It makes one solemn to think how much he knows about gas engines."

"So that's how he did it!" I observed. "Different men have different ways to charm, I suppose. I don't remember that looks were his long suit."

"If you were a woman, that would be called catty."

"Oh, I don't want to detract from him," I said. "He used to dance with wall-flowers and they said he was an angel to his sister."

"It was that sister who was the real trouble," she said meditatively.

"What had she to do with it?" I asked.

"Oh, just being there--being his sister--being an invalid, yon know."

"No, I don't know, at all."

"The trouble is, I'm telling you the end of the story first."

"Let's start at the very beginning."

"In real life beginnings and middles and ends of things are all so jumbled up."

"When I went away," I said, "everybody thought it was Harry Clayton, with the Englishman as a strong second, and there wasn't any Malcolm about it."

"Do yon remember the flurry in Great Westerns?" she asked.

"That's surely the beginning of something else," I remarked,

"No, it's the beginning of this."

I've a faint memory they jumped up to something tremendous, didn't they?"

"It was the biggest thing of its kind ever seen on Wall Street."

"Wall Street!" I exclaimed. "The voice is Jess Hardy's, but--"

"Well, you can't buy a Manton car without a little trouble."

"Or twenty-five hundred dollars in a certified check."

"It's nearer three thousand, with acetylene lamps, top, baskets, extra tires, French tooter, freight, insurance, extra tools and a leather coat."

"You've got the thing down fine," I said. "You speak like a folder."

"Well, I didn't have any three thousand dollars," she continued, undisturbed; "all I had was an allowance of a hundred a month, a grand piano, a horse (you remember my, blood mare, Gee-whizz?) a lot of posters, and a father."

"He seems to me the biggest asset of the lot," I observed.

"I thought so, too, till I tried him," she said. "He had the automobile fever, too--only the negative kind--wanted to shoot them with a gun."

"Surely it's dangerous enough already, without adding that."

"For a time I didn't know what to do," she went on. "I thought I'd have to try the stage, or write one of those Marie Bashkirtseff books that shock people into buying them by thousands--and whenever I saw a Manton on the road my eyes would almost pop out of my head. Then, when I was almost desperate, Mr. Collenquest came on a visit to papa."

"I see now why you said Wall Street," I remarked.

"Mr. Collenquest is an old friend of papa's," she continued. "They were at the same college, and both belonged to what they call 'the wonderful old class of seventy-nine,' and there's nothing in the world papa wouldn't do for Mr. Collenquest or Mr. Collenquest for papa. I had never seen him before and had rather a wild idea of him from the caricatures in the paper--you know the kind--with dollar-signs all over his clothes and one of his feet on the neck of Honest Toil. Well, he wasn't like that a bit--in fact, he was more like a bishop than anything else and the only thing he ever put his foot on was a chair when he and papa would sit up half the night talking about the wonderful old class of seventy-nine. Papa is rather a quiet man ordinarily, but that week it seemed as though he'd never stop laughing; and I'd wake up at one o'clock in the morning and hear them still at it. Of course, they had long serious talks, too, and Mr. Collenquest was never so like a bishop as when the conversation turned on stocks and Wall Street. When he boomed out things like 'the increasing tendency of associated capital in this country,' or 'the admitted financial emancipation of the Middle West,'--you felt somehow you were a better girl for having listened to him. What he seemed to like best--besides sitting up all night till papa was a wreck--was to take walks. He was as bad about horses as papa was about automobiles--and of course papa had to go, too --and naturally I tagged after them both--and so we walked and walked and walked.

"Well, one day they were talking about investments, and stocks, and how cheap money was, and how hard it was to know what to do with it, and I was picking wild-flowers and wondering whether I'd have my Manton red, or green with gilt stripes, when I heard something that brought me up like an explosion in the muffler.

"'I know you are pretty well fixed, Fred,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but I never knew a man yet who couldn't do with forty or fifty thousand more.'

"'I don't care to get it that way, Bill,' said my father.

"'I tell you Great Western is going to reach six hundred and fifty,' said Mr. Collenquest.

"I picked daisies fast, but if there ever was a girl all ears, it was I.

"'I am giving you a bit of inside information that's worth millions of dollars,' said Mr. Collenquest in that solemn tone that always gave me the better-girl feeling.

"'My dear old chap,' said papa, 'I don't want you to believe I am not grateful for this sort of proof of your friendship; and you mustn't think, because I have strong convictions, that I arrogate any superior, virtue to myself. Every man must be a law to himself. I have never speculated and I never will.'

"Mr. Collenquest heaved a regular bishop's sigh, and stopped and put one foot on a log as though it was a toiler.

"'This isn't speculation, Fred,' he said. 'This is a fact, because I happen to be rigging the market myself.'

"'I don't care to do it,' said my, father, as firmly as before.

"'If it's just being a little short of ready money,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'well--my purse is yours, you know--from one figure to six.'

"My father only shook his head.

"'I said fifty thousand,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but there is nothing to prevent your adding another naught to it.

"'It's speculating,' said my father.

"'Well, I'm sorry,' said Mr Collenquest. 'I'm getting pretty far into the forties now, Fred, and I don't think the world holds anything dearer to me than a few old friends like yourself.' He put out his hand as he spoke, and papa took it. It was awfully affecting. I looked as girly-girly as I could, lest they should catch me listening, and picked daisies harder than ever.

"'Of course, this is sacredly confidential,' said Mr. Collenquest, 'but I know you'll let it go no farther, Fred.'

"'My word on that,' said my father in his grand, gentleman-of -the-old-school way.

"Then they started to walk again, and though I felt a little sneak right down to my shoes, I listened and listened for anything more. But they wandered off into the Pressed Steel Car Company, till it got so tiresome I ached all over.

"That night I didn't do anything, because I wanted to think it ever; but the next morning I went to papa and asked him point-blank if I might sell Gee-whizz if I wanted go. He looked very grave, and talked a lot about what a good horse Gee-whizz was, and how hard I'd find it to replace her. But it was one of papa's rules that there shouldn't be any strings to his presents to me--that's the comfort of having a thoroughbred for your father, you know--and ever since I was a little child he had always told me what was mine was mine to do just what I liked with. He's the whitest father a girl ever had. But he spoke to me beautifully in a sort of man-to-man way, and was perfectly splendid in not asking any questions. If he hadn't been such a bubble-hater, I'd have thrown my arms round his neck and told him everything. So I let it go at promising him the refusal of the mare in case I decided to sell her.

"Then I kited after Mr. Collenquest, whom I found in a hammock, reading a basketful of telegrams.

"'Oh, don't get up,' I said (because he was always a most punctilious old fellow). 'The fact is, I just wanted to have a little business talk with you.'

"'Oh, a business talk,' he said, in a be-nice-to-the-child tone.

"'Yes,' I said, 'I thought I might perhaps take a little flyer in Great Westerns.'

"You ought to have seen him leap out of that hammock. I quaked all over, like Honest Labor in the pictures.

"He smothered an awful bad swear and turned as pale as a white Panhard.

"'Little girl,' he said, 'you've been listening to things you had no right to hear.'

"'I didn't mean to listen,' I said. 'Really and truly, Mr. Collenquest, I didn't--'

"'You were forty feet away picking wildflowers,' he said.

"'You didn't realize how badly I wanted a Manton,' I said.

"'A Manton!' he cried out. 'What in heaven's name is a Manton?'

"It's awful to think how little some people know! I'm sure he thought it was something to wear.

"I explained to him what a Manton is.

"'And so you must have a Manton,' he said.

"'Did you ever want anything so bad that it kept you awake at night?' I asked him.

"He looked at me a long time without saying a word. He was one of the kings of Wall Street and I was only a five-foot-three girl, and I felt such a little cad when I saw his hands were trembling.

"'Jess,' he said, 'if you chose to do it you could half ruin me. You could shake some of the biggest houses in New York; you could drive the Forty-fourth National Bank into the hands of a receiver. You could start a financial earthquake.'

"And he looked at me again a long time.

"'The point is,' he began once more, 'are you strong enough to keep such a secret? Have you the character to do it--the grit--the determination?'

"'Just watch me!' I said.

"I thought it was a good sign that he smiled.

"'Just keep this to yourself for one month,' he said, 'and I'll send you the biggest, the reddest, the most dangerous, noisy, horse-frightening, man-destroying, high-stepping, high-smelling --what do you call it--Manton?--in the whole United States.'

"'Oh, Mr. Collenquest, I couldn't do that,' I said.

"Then he got frightened all over again.

"'Why not?' he demanded. 'Why not?

"'I wouldn't put a price on my secrecy,' I said. 'That wasn't what I meant at all, only I thought you might be good-natured enough to let me in on the deal--with a margin on Gee-whizz, you know.'

"'I suppose I am getting old,' he said, 'and getting stupid--but would you mind explaining to me what you want in words of one syllable?'

"'You wanted to put papa on a good thing,' I said. 'He wouldn't have it, so I thought you might pass it along to me,

"'You seem to have passed it along to yourself,' he remarked, a bit ironically.

"'It's a very small matter to you,' I pleaded, 'but it's a whole Manton to me.'

"'And the shock nearly killed father,' he said, mopping his bishop forehead.

"'I can make papa give me four hundred and fifty dollars for Gee-whizz,' I said; 'and the question is, is that enough?'

"'Enough for what?' he asked.

"'For a Manton, of course,' I said.

"'Would you mind putting it in figures instead of gasoline?' he said, laughing as though he had made an awfully good joke. I laughed, too--just to humor him.

"'Well,' I said, 'with acetylene lamps, top, baskets, extra tires, French tooter, freight, insurance, spare tools and a leather coat--say three thousand.'

"'I can double that for you,' he said.

"'I don't want one cent more,' I said. That was just my chance to shine--and I shined.

"He made a note of it in his pocketbook.

"'That's settled,' he said.

"'Not till I've said one thing more,' I remarked, 'and that is, I shan't be horrid if the thing goes the wrong way. My dressmaker once put a hundred dollars in an oil company, and the oil company man was surer than you--and yet it went pop. I can easily tease my mare back from papa.'

"He lay back again in the hammock and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"'Oh, Jess Hardy,' he said, 'you'll be the death of me!'--and he laughed as though it was at one of his own jokes.

"'I'd hate to make a vacancy in the wonderful old class of seventy-nine,' I said.

"'Now, I want to say something, too,' he said, getting serious again. 'If you have a pet minister who can't afford a holiday, or you want to help that dressmaker pay off her mortgage, or give a boost to a poor family who have had diphtheria--don't you think to help them by tipping off Great Western Preferred. That sort of charity may sound cheap, but it's likely to cost me hundreds of thousands. Let me know, and I'll send them checks.'

"'Don't you worry about me,' I said.

"'I am told you are engaged to an Englishman,' he said; 'an Embassy man at Washington. You aren't making any kind of mental reservation in his case, are you?'

"'He's the last person I tell anything to,' I said. 'That is, --anything important, you know.'

"'Then, Miss Jess Hardy,' he said, with his eyes twinkling as though he were giving an Apostolic benediction at a Vanderbilt wedding, 'if you'll bring me your four-fifty we'll close the deal.'

"'Perhaps it would be as well to leave papa out of this,' I hinted. 'I mean about telling him anything, you know'

"'Oh, distinctly,' he said. 'Fred's a bit old-fashioned and we must respect his prejudices. Wait till you get him on the cowcatcher of your Manton, anti then break it to him gently.'

"'And, Mr. Collenquest,' I said, 'if you should really think it awfully low and horrid of me to do this--I won't do it.'

"'My dear little girl,' he returned, 'get that out of your head right here. I hope your car will prove everything you want it to be, and the same with your Englishman, and I'm only too grateful that it wasn't a steam yacht you had set your heart on, or a palace on the Hudson.'

"There isn't much more to be said about this part of the afair. Papa paid me four-fifty for Gee-whizz, and I handed the check to Mr. Collenquest, and Mr. Collenquest went away, and then the market began to turn bullish (isn't that the word?) and Great Western went up with a whoop, and it got whoopier and whoppier; and whenever anybody was certain it had reached the top-notch it would take another kick skyward, and it went on jumping and jumping till finally there came a letter from Mr. Collenquest with a check for three thousand five hundred dollars, saying I must have forgotten about buying Gee-whizz back again, and that he had taken the liberty of exceeding my instructions about selling till my shares had touched that figure. Then one morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car--my car--came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert--they had thrown him in for a week for nothing--him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try--and a gasoline tester --the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways--and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy went out, and my, aunt went out, and the five guests that were staying with us went out, and the servants went out--and you never saw such a mix-up in all your life, nor such excitement and hurrah-boys generally. For papa was ordering it off the place, and I was explaining about Great Western Preferred, and my aunt was trying to make us listen about a friend who had been burned to death with a gasoline stove, and the guests were taking my part and fighting for the first ride, and the expert was showing off the double vertical cylinders, and explaining splash lubrication to the butler, whom he must have mistaken for papa, and--

"When it had settled down a bit and the battle-smoke drifted away and showed who had won--which was me, naturally--and I had promised aunt to be, oh, so careful, and papa that I'd cross my heart never to go into stocks again, and rides, of course, to the guests, and everything to everybody--then they all went back to breakfast while I had mine brought out on the veranda--mine and the expert's--and I guess I talked four speeds ahead while he ate his on the low gear--for he had come ninety miles and wasn't much of a talker at any time--and I just sat there and gloated over my Manton.

"We had a perfectly delirious week together--the expert and I --for the Manton turned out perfectly splendid and everything they said it was, except for the rear tires blowing up three times, and a short circuit in the coil owing to a faulty condenser; and though it was all I could do to hold it down on the low speeds, you ought to have seen me on the forty-mile clip--till they said I'd have to go to prison for the next offense without the option of a fine. The expert was one of the nicest men you ever saw, and we used to take off cylinder heads, and adjust cams, and spend hours knocking everything to pieces and putting them together again so that I might be prepared for getting on without him. He said he hated to think of that time, and what do you suppose he did? I was lying under the machine at the time, studying the differential, while he was jacking up an axle. Proposed, positively. I dropped a nut and a cotter pin out of my mouth, I was so astonished. We talked it over for about five minutes through one of the artillery, wheels, and I must say he took it beautifully. I wanted to be nice to him, because he had been so patient in explaining things, and never got tired of being asked the same question fifty times. He wiped his eyes with some cotton waste and told me that even if years were to pass and oceans and continents divide us, I had only to say 'come' and he'd come--that is, if I ever got into real trouble with the Manton.

"When it came to saying good-by to him I let him take my cap as a keepsake and accepted a dynamo igniter that he guaranteed not to burn out the wires (though that's exactly what it did a week afterward) and it was all too sad for anything. The governor, you know, that was attached to the igniter, got stuck somehow, and of course the current just sizzled up the plug. Then, when I had been running the machine for about a week and doing splendidly with it, Captain Cartwright turned up from Washington. I suppose I wasn't so pleased as I ought to have been to see him, for though we were engaged and all that, there were wheels within wheels and--you know how silly girls are and what fool things they do, and Gerard Malcolm and the captain, to make matters worse, talked a whole streak about good form, and how in England they always walked their automobites, and how hateful anything like speeding (and going to jail) was to a real English lady, and 'Oh, my dear, would the Queen do it?' Can't you hear him? It goaded me into saying awful things back, and when I took him out for his first spin, as grumpy as only an Englishman can be after you've insulted him from his hat to his boots, I just opened the throttle, threw in the high clutch, and let her go. There were some things I liked about the captain, and the best was that he didn't scare easy. He just folded his arms and never wiggled an eyelash while I took some of the grades like the Empire State Express.

"I knew he was boiling inside, in spite of his calm, British, new-washed look, for I hadn't let him kiss me or anything, and nobody, however brave he is, welcomes the idea of being squashed under a ton of old iron. You see I was in a perfectly vicious humor, thinking what an awful mistake I had made, and what a little fool I had been, and how if it had only been Gerard Malcolm--and while my hands were clenched on the steering-wheel I could see the mark of his horrid ring' sticking through my gauntlets, and I wouldn't have cared two straws if I had blown up a tire just then, and driven head-foremost through a stone wall.

"I had given him about eighteen miles of this sort of thing when the right-hand cylinder began to miss a little. Then, after a while, the left started to skip, too. I stopped under a tree to look for the trouble and pulled up the bonnet. The spark-plugs were badly carbonized, and when I had seen to them and had put the captain on the crank, we could only get explosions at intervals. There was good compression; everything was lubricating nicely; no heating or sticking anywhere--but the engine had lain down on us. The captain was so angry he wouldn't speak a word to me, and mumbled red-hot things to himself under his breath. Guess how I felt. But he was too much of a gentleman not to crank--and so he cranked and cranked and still nothing happened. I chased a whole row of things one after another--battery, buzzer, oil or gasoline in the cylinders, defective insulation, commutator, water in the carburettor, choked feed-pipe,--and all it did was to cough in a dreary, tow-me-home-to-mother sort of way,

"If the captain had known anything about engines and could have made it start, I expect I would have married him and lived happy ever afterward. It was just his Heaven-sent chance to win out and show he was the right man for the place. But he didn't know enough to run a phonograph and began to talk about getting towed home, and how if he ever bought a machine it would be electric. If I had been out of patience with him before, imagine what I felt then! He said he knew all the time I was driving too fast and hurting something, and thought he had proved it by the cylinders being hot--as though they aren't always hot. It was awful how stupid he was and helpless and disagreeable. He couldn't even crank properly and the engine back-fired on him and hurt his hand. Finally I got so desperate that I sat down and cried, while he nursed his hand and said we ought to desert the machine and go home, and that papa would be anxious if we didn't turn up to lunch. I knew all the time he was talking about his lunch. You don't know what an Englishman is if he isn't fed regularly, and it was now after one and we were eighteen miles from High Court.

"But I wasn't the girl to give up the ship. As long as there weren't any fractures or things stuck together I knew the expert could have made it go--and if the expert, why not I? If the captain hadn't flurried me with all the silly things he said, I believe I would have ferreted out the trouble all right. But I was so cross and tired and disgusted that my brain was stalled as well as the Manton, and so I gave up for a little while and wouldn't even answer the captain when he spoke to me.

"Oh, yes, we were pigs, both of us, he in his way and I in mine; and the sun went down and down, and it didn't make me feel any better to think that I was smudged all over with grease, and that my hands and nails were something awful--while if ever there was a galley-slave at the oar, it was the Honorable John Vincent Cartwright cranking.

"We went on in this way till nearly four o'clock, when what should we hear coming along the road but a buggy, and who should be in that buggy but Gerard Malcolm with an actressy-looking girl! I wasn't over-pleased at the girl part of it, but it did my heart good to see Gerard. He drew up alongside the Manton and leaped out of the buggy, so splendid and handsome and cool and masterful, with a glisten in his eye which said: 'Bring on your gas-engine!'--that I loved him harder than ever, and could have almost torn the captain's ring off my finger. He didn't waste any time saying how-do-you-do, but just asked this and that and dived in. Then he pegged away for about five minutes, wiped his hands, took his bat that the captain had been holding, and said: 'Gears!'

"'It'll take me about two hours to break them loose,' he said, 'and so if Miss Stanton wouldn't mind trading escorts, and if the captain would take the buggy, I think Miss Hardy and I had better stay by the machine.'

"Miss Stanton didn't look nearly so pleased as the captain; but when Gerard said again he positively couldn't manage it under two hours, and I snubbed her when she proposed towing, and when the captain brightened up and made a good impression--he was so excited, poor fellow, at the chance of getting away--that it all came right, and they drove off cheerfully together. When they had quite disappeared, Gerard threw down the wrench he had in his hand, and said we'd now have that talk he had been trying to get with me for the past month.

"'We'll do the gears first, thank you,' I said.

"'Gears!' he exclaimed, 'there's nothing the matter with the gears. I thought you were chauffeur enough for that'

"'But you said--' I began.

"I can make this car move in five minutes,' he said, climbing into the tonneau and motioning with his hand for me to take the other seat.

"Of course I obeyed him. I didn't want to, but somehow when Gerard wants a thing I always do it. They say every woman finds her master, and though I hate to admit it even to myself, I suppose Gerard is mine. But I hid it all I could and I dare say I was pretty successful. It care all the easier because Gerard himself was kind of embarrassed, and he colored up and stammered while I sat in the tonneau, waiting for him to begin.

"'I thought you said you were going to talk,' I said.

"'Jess,' he said, 'my sister is going to get married.'

"Now, this was news, indeed. She was lots old older than Gerard --forty years old, if a day--and a chronic invalid. I don't know exactly what was the matter with her, but she had a bad complexion, and used to stick pretty tight is the house, and was always absorbed in church work. She had snappy black eyes, and Gerard couldn't call his soul his own. They kept house together, you know, and had been orphans ever since they were little.

"'Oh, married!' I said, pretending to be little interested.

"'It's Mr. Simpson, the curate,' he said.

"It seemed rude to be too surprised, so I just rattled off some of the usual congratulations. Gerard didn't say a word. He simply looked and looked, and there was something beautiful to me in his shame and backwardness and hesitation.

"'It's very unexpected,' he blurted out at last. 'I thought I was going to take care of her always. It is going to make a great difference in my life.'

"'I know how you always devoted yourself to her,' I said.

"'I had made up my mind never to marry,' he went on. 'How could I marry?--for it would have been like turning her out of doors. She was too ill and helpless and despondent to live by herself, and had I brought a third person into the family it would have been misery all round.'

"Still I said nothing.

"'Jess,' he said suddenly, 'don't you understand? Can't you understand?'

"In fact, I did understand very well. It explained a heap of things--why he had always acted so strangely--sometimes so devoted to me, sometimes so distant; crazy to hold my hand one day and avoiding me the next. It was no wonder he had made me utterly desperate and piqued me into accepting the captain. Then he said: 'Jess, Jess!' like that; and 'for God's sake, was it too late?'

"I couldn't trust myself to speak and I could feel my lips trembling. I didn't sob or anything, but the tears just rolled down my cheeks. Wasn't it a dead giveaway? It's awful to care for a man as much as that. I thought it was splendid of him that he didn't try to kiss me. He simply took my hand and pulled off the captain's ring and said I had to give it back to him at once. Then I broke down altogether and began to cry like a baby, while Gerard got out and emptied the kerosene from the oil lamps into the exhaust valves. You see, pieces of scale from the inside of the cylinders had wedged against the exhaust-valve seats so that they wouldn't close tight, but leaked and leaked. Gerard said that new Mantons always feed too rich a mixture at first and that he knew what was the matter the moment he stuck his fingers in.

"We went home on the second speed so that Gerard could steer with one hand.

"Oh, the captain? He acted kind of miserable at first, and was awfully sarcastic about being a gentleman and not a gas-engineer. But I said the modern idea was to be both. He got himself transferred home and I really think it was the making of him--for what do you think happened last week? He won the nonstop London to Glasgow race on an eighteen horsepower Renault. I felt quite proud of him.

"He has asked Gerard and me and the Manton to spend a month with him in England when we go abroad. He said I'd probably be pleased to hear that he had made a lovely garage out of his ancestral Norman chapel. But I suppose that was just his English humor, you know. Anyway, we are the best of friends, and if I ever see him again I'll give him a double toot on my French horn."

"And what became of the curate and Gerard's sister?"

"Oh, they married and went into steam."

[The end]
Lloyd Osbourne's short story: The Motormaniacs

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